Catherine Connolly has received more than 65% of the Laois vote in this year’s Presidential Election after the results of the first count were officially announced by local Returning Officer Rory Hanniffy.
We had earlier reported on the tally figures which have largely borne out in the official result.
The first count results were announced in the Nagle Rice Sports Complex in Portlaoise this afternoon and have been fed into the central count centre in Dublin.
The Independent candidate is on course to be elected as Ireland’s 10th president, replacing her fellow Galway native Michael D Higgins who has served two terms since 2011.
In total Connolly got 65.12% of the valid vote, 15,814 votes in total.
That was ahead of Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys who received 6,775 first preferences, or 27.9% of the vote. Fianna Fáil’s Jim Gavin, who had pulled out of the race three weeks ago, got 1,694 votes in Laois or 6.98%.
In total 28,439 votes were cast in Laois from an electorate of 64,816. It meant that turnout was 43.9%, ahead of what it was in 2018.
Significantly, though, there were 4,156 spoiled votes, a massive 14.6%. That figure is usually around 1%. There were just 231 spoiled votes in Laois at last year’s General Election.
